Location

Description

Banner depicting small geometric dots that give the illusion of the shadow of a grain silo

Additional Information

Perhaps the most simply articulated submission of all, ‘………that Hourglass Figure’ by Bob Trempe, Professor of Architecture at Temple University, was a jury favorite both for its 2D manipulation of a 3D surface, and the method by which he achieves the illusion. Manipulating a convex concrete silo with only an exterior surface is likely a frustrating constraint for an architect. But with a series of simple black dots, Trempe’s submission virtually modifies the geometrical quality of one silo through the draping of a simple gradient pattern. This pattern, designed in the shape of an hourglass, perceptually “tapers” the middle of the silo inward through the patterned shadow image. The pattern of dots creates the shaded quality one would find on a tapered, cylindrical surface. Bob Trempe’s work as an architect and educator focuses on new methods of information visualization and how resultant emergent information can serve as instruction for architectural production. Thought of as the study of process itself, Bob’s works are typically articulated through repetitious systems, exploiting time-based qualities to notate, visualize, and analyze changes-in-state.

Additional Information: A neighbor of the towering grain elevator, 10-year old Tinca Joyner found inspiration for her submission from the plants she cultivates in her own backyard. Both a productive farmer and artist, Tinca has lived in Omaha for all of her 10-year life and has been making art and planting seeds for most of it. The Stored Potential jury found the intersection of these two things especially noteworthy in Joyner’s use of reds and oranges to depict the juicy fruit (or is it a vegetable?) in a style representative of Art Nouveau, especially in its tenet of applying artistic design to everyday utilitarian objects, in order to make beautiful things available to everyone. Although Tinca intended for the tomatoes in her drawing to be oriented to the bottom, as a tomato plant often looks like when supporting large bunches of fruit from a plant that commonly out-produces the needs of the grower, Tinca says the guy at Kinkos accidentally scanned her drawing with the tomatoes to the top. Perhaps he knew that placing the bunch of tomatoes at the top of the elevator would maximize their exposure.

Additional Information: ‘Aerial Production’, by DeOld Andersen Architecture, a partnership between Nebraska natives Emily Andersen and Geoff DeOld, depicts the transformation of the Midwest landscape at the city edge from farmstead to suburban and exurban development. Focusing on a swath of land at the edge of Omaha two miles long by a half mile wide, three different stages of land use are captured simultaneously; productive farmland, former farmland in the process of being re-formed into suburban tract development, and a completed and occupied residential development. This abstracted representation of a literal condition unifies the fits and starts by which land development occurs through a lens of production – land that once produced agricultural crops now produces homes and the infrastructures that support them.

Additional Information: M. Brady Clark’s image is striking, simple, and speaks volumes about the Midwest. Although it isn’t the ‘beef’ Nebraska is most identified with, nor is it condoned by vegetarian friends, it is nonetheless symbolic and representative of the place and certainly the landscape. M. Brady’s ‘Bacon’ is less about specific species of animal, but more about place, consumption, and culture. According to M. Brady, “My work is simply to use my God-given gift to make things better and more beautiful.” Representing Bacon at nearly 80′ tall, on a grain elevator, might be the perfect combination of literal (grain transfer to animal protein) combined with scale to create abstract beauty.

Additional Information: Brian Kelly, an Omaha architect and educator approached his submission as a prime opportunity for initiating dialogue about the issues affecting the population both locally and globally. Rather than attempting to resolve an architectural design problem, he is interested in encouraging an exchange of ideas about the possible reuse of agricultural and industrial relics such as these, and the catalytic change that urban infill can generate. His idea seeks to simultaneously celebrate the silo’s history and suggest a rejuvenation of the edifice that points to a synergetic contemporary culture and its lifestyles. As an architect, educator, and amateur photographer, Brian has a deep fascination with the power of the image and the ability of Montage Theory to create, as Sergei Eisnstein called it, “tertium quid” or third thing. This theory suggests that the assemblage of various, unrelated sequences in a film may be combined to produce a situation where the sum is greater than its parts. In concre(A)te synergies, a series of images of unrelated building components were assembled to create a visual alluding to something outside itself.

Additional Information: Corn is undeniably the heart of the ‘Cornhusker State’. Aside from the moniker of college football where on game days, Memorial Stadium is referred to as the third largest ‘city’ in the state, the seasonal landscape is ruled by the growing cycle of ‘The King Crop’. For Omaha native, Jeremy Reding, his submission not only expresses the importance of the plant to the State of Nebraska but also its role in the transformation of our farms, livestock, grocery stores, and beyond. By conveying the corncob as a scannable barcode, the simple image attempts to connect viewers to corn as a commodity. Viewers can use the scanner on a smartphone and be directed to a website currently being built by Reding that will list the derivatives of the crop, many of which are surprising and will undoubtedly further the conversation about the pervasiveness of corn in our lives, and impact throughout the world.

Additional Information: Omaha artist Mary Day scanned an ear of corn for what she calls a ‘cliche’; to be in Nebraska is to be surrounded by corn, literally and figuratively. And the image of the corn cob is a most obvious recall of the identity and function of the grain elevator as a structure that originally stored the grain. But Mary’s scan lead her to a submission that is anything but cliche, and rather a re-composition of an iconic symbol of farmland in Nebraska and the Midwest, based on an implicitly recurring unit of measure. A corn kernel to a corn row to a corn cob to the rows of corn to the fields of corn is an exponentially increasing unit of measure. Mary used her scanned ear of corn as the structural equivalent of “mathematical” divisions in the picture plane, similar to those that strike her each time she flies over the Omaha landscape. The conceptualization of the rows of kernels parallel the larger concept of rows of corn in the field to fields of corn in the landscape, and so on. Breaking the corn cob into informational lines which converge back to an image of corn parallels the artistic process of contextualizing images into information. The handmade mark is important to the concept because it is a visceral response to visually perceived information. Drawing is about the connection of head to heart to hand. The finished drawing on the silo shows the gestural mark held within the structural division of the corn cob. The drawing of the corn cob into informational bits is an equivalent for patterns perceived from an airplane, or Google earth, or NASA satellite photos.

Additional Information: For pastel artist Matthew Rezac, who grew up near Bennington, Nebraska, a suburbanizing town northwest of Omaha, the Stored Potential project provoked this reflection on the intimacy between tool, farmer, land, and family. To the Stored Potential jury, Matthew’s drawing of a simple cultivator took on the quality and scale of infrastructure when sized equal to the elevator and juxtaposed with the adjacent freeway.

Additional Information: Hidden underground, the alarming depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer literally lacks visibility. When California native, Scott Keyes, began doing research for his Stored Potential submission and for the first time learned of the diminishing Ogallala Aquifer, he saw the potential to make this hidden resource visible. By taking advantage of the silo’s enormous height to create a 1:1 scale model of well 5N 40W28CDA, a groundwater irrigation unit located in Chase County, Nebraska, Keyes creates a tangible snapshot of the region’s precarious relationship to its most invaluable natural resource. Using USGS data gathered since 1970, historical water levels within the well are marked at five year intervals along the silo’s interior – the walls that once contained the commodity created by confluence of sun energy and underground water. The jury agreed that by rendering this important water issue visible, this submission represents a byproduct of the region’s agricultural legacy which is as real and concrete as the abandoned silos on which it is situated.

Additional Information: Influenced by the structural elements of grain elevator architecture, Omaha graphic designer Cathy Solarana chose the subordinate drive shed as her focus of exploration. Drive sheds had their own structural and functional personalities despite being dwarfed by the huge multi-barreled contiguous white concrete cylinders they served. Cathy Solarana believes good design comes from inside the project — one must understand the depth of something before it can be communicated to the world. This is why she begins each project with thoughtful research into what the brand stands for now, and what its hopes to communicate in the future. Through Cathy’s exploration into grain elevator structure, she created an iconic design style of a simple line and shape. Together with graphic bold colors the drive shed becomes the focal point, rather than a supplemental structure. The use of scale pays homage to its purpose. The giant wheat stalk stands as a representation of all the grains that have filled the silos and fed families, not just in consumables, but as an employer, customer, investor, and a vital commercial hub, for generations. The striped curve pattern in the background is an abstraction inspired by a hand forged silo in rural Nebraska from the 1930′s.

Additional Information: Inspired by the Stored Potential project description reference to “reading the landscape,” public artist Matthew Farley immediately envisioned center-pivot irrigation circles. An aerial reminder of the grid system imposed over much of the United States by Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 National Land Survey, the pattern still provides the basic geometric order of the once unruly Great Plains. Using satellite imagery, Matthew has stitched together a “quilt” of parcels from the Nebraska landscape near the town of Ogallala so that the resulting arrangement of darkened crop circles emerge as Braille symbols. Coded within the crop circles is a reference to the Ogallala (High Plains) Aquifer, the precious resource stored below—perhaps the ultimate “stored potential.” The image’s pattern alludes to the originating word, “oglala” (lower case is used in the translation for visual purposes), meaning “to scatter one’s own.” The watery color palette offers a visual clue to this coded text—and certainly, the “circles of blue” are appropriate as well. The banner utilizes high-resolution satellite imagery courtesy of the United States Geological Survey that reveal details such as tractor tire marks, which form another layer of patterning reminiscent of quilting and an indication of deeper settlement: cultivation.

Additional Information: The artists encourage support for smaller scale agriculture with the banner, “Speak Up for Small Farms.” Conceived as a ‘landscape’ of political activism, their banner is a quilt of 539 colored hexagons with each swatch indicating a Senate or Congressional district and enjoining them with the printed statement, “Speak Up for Small Farms.” When installed, the banner will represent a roll call of those who have the power to change the way we legislate and regulate farming in the United States. After exhibition at four locations in Nebraska, the banner will be harvested by a regional group of farmers, and each hexagon will be detached and mailed to the designated US Senator, Member of The House of Representatives, and host cities Mayor.

Additional Information: Designed by landscape designer and urban planner, Shaun Smakal was the only submission out of 150 to embrace the crucial global topic of energy. During Smakal’s background research for his entry, he accidentally discovered that a silo is the exact proportion of a AA battery, and their past use as grain storage certainly represents enormous quantities of energy storage. The image as a whole, represents a battery, and each subsequent spectrum of color a battery itself and a graphic image of sixteen potential energy resources as identified by Scientific American, in order of increasingly irreversible impact on our larger landscape. The graphic images visually highlight the energy resource itself, with an emphasis on how it exists in the landscape or its raw form, and the colors reference both a natural rainbow and the Dept. of Homeland Security’s National Terror Alert System.